The availability of shared storage systems for electronic documents has increased the ability of computer end users to share and to collaborate in the creation of a variety of electronic documents. End users can cause electronic documents to be stored in shared storage systems on a computer network, such as the internet. End users can instruct such a shared storage system to allow electronic documents to be shared with other end users of the shared storage system. A shared storage system generally has an access control component in a file system that tracks, for each electronic document, the access rights that different end users have for the electronic document.
After an electronic document has been shared among two or more end users, the shared storage system manages access to the shared electronic document to ensure consistency of the electronic document, especially in the case of collaborative editing of, i.e., collaborative modifications to, the electronic document. A collaboration system manages collaborative modification by tracking which end users currently are using end user applications on client computers to access the same electronic document. The collaboration system typically is implemented as one or more computer programs executing on the server computer, and, in some implementations, may have components executing on the client computers.
An end user application running on a computer, for the purpose of modifying electronic documents, typically is configured to allow an editor to associate a comment with a location within the electronic document. Any single editor may add multiple comments to an electronic document. When the electronic document is shared, such comments can originate from multiple editors using multiple end user applications. As an electronic document has a larger number of comments from a larger number of users, management of the comments becomes increasingly complex.